RUSH: Now, there’s something else to throw into the mix here, and it is rooted in my own stated anecdotal investigation. I can’t find… Folks, I can’t find anybody — and I’m not exaggerating here. I can’t find anybody who brings this up. When I’m out anywhere, I can’t find anybody. I had dinner with some friends last night. The subject didn’t come up.

Now, normally when there’s something hot in the news and I’m in a group, I always get questions. “What do you think of this? What’s really happening with that? Do you know anything that’s not known in the media?” That kind of stuff. Nothing! And I told you I had lunch after golf a couple Saturdays ago. I had to bring it up, and I asked these guys, “Why are you guys…?” Nobody’s taking it seriously. It’s just more of what the Democrats have been doing since election night 2016.

Tell me if I’m wrong here. As you go about your life, there’s a whole lot of living going on out there that has nothing to do with any of this. This is not captivating people’s attention. It’s not all they’re talking about. We’ve got a booming economy out there that people are engaged in. We’ve got a story in the Stack today. It’s a column by Steve Moore in the Wall Street Journal about how real wages are skyrocketing, average 8% increase in the recent timeframe being analyzed.

I mean, this stuff is not front and center on everybody’s mind. The Democrats — Schiff and these guys — in one way are kind of fortune, in the sense they’re getting away to a very small audience with massive delusion and lies. Most people are not glued to this. Most people are out there living their lives. I think there’s so much burnout on all of this, because there have been so many promises. There has been so much certainty in the media that Trump was history, that Trump was some rotgut traitor.

And none of it — none of it — has come to pass. The vast majority of the American people are not waiting with bated breath for one of these allegations the Democrats seem to make every two weeks to come to fruition. Now, how that plays out is anybody’s guess. It can be a dual-edge sword. When you’re winning these things, you want a lot of people to be paying attention. When you’re losing them, you’re happy if people aren’t.

Another computer gremlin. Note that that did not take me off my game whatsoever. You know the kind of things people are talking about? What do you think people are talking about, Snerdley? Just take a wild guess. There’s no wrong answer. I’m just curious what you think they’re talk… (interruption) Okay. They are talking about… (interruption) Well, yeah. They’re talking about making it, being a success in life, what it takes, all that.

I think this ChiCom stuff people are talking about, the NBA, because that’s sports.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here’s Timothy. Timothy in… Is it Winder, Georgia? Great to have you. Hi.

CALLER: Yes, Rush. Thank you. And it’s a pleasure to talk to a great American and a patriot.

RUSH: Well, thank you, sir, very much.

CALLER: Yes, Rush, I think there’s something that’s being lost in all this talk about the Democrats wanting to impeach Trump. And if it does go to the Senate and they are wanting to pick off one or two Republicans in the Senate, like Mitt Romney, everybody’s forgetting about Manchin. What I call him is “the deer in the headlight senator,” the senator from West Virginia, the Democrat, Joe Manchin.

RUSH: Yes.

CALLER: Yes. Last year he almost peed his pants about the Kavanaugh vote. And I cannot see Mr. Manchin voting against Donald Trump for impeachment ’cause he will commit suicide in West Virginia. I can see Trump going there and campaigning against him in three years when it’s time for him to be voted back into office.

RUSH: All right. So you think that even if the Democrats are able to pick off a couple Republicans, they’re gonna have at least one, or maybe more, Democrat defections on any final vote to acquit?

CALLER: Yes. I believe that the Democrats might get that Republican, but it’d be like taking a water pistol to a gunfight. It means nothing because of the bipartisan —

RUSH: I don’t… Well, look. Of course, that in and of itself just within that universe is accurate. But I don’t see it ever getting there. I don’t care how it happens, it’s an acquittal. Whether the acquittal has some Republicans that voted for Trump or a couple Democrats that didn’t, the news is that after four years of Russia collusion that didn’t happen. Four years of trying to buy off Stormy Daniels, that didn’t happen. Four years of Kavanaugh attacks…  If Trump is acquitted it isn’t gonna matter who voted how. And the Democrats are never gonna let it get that far.

The only way they’re gonna let it get that far is if they have way advance news that Romney is able to grab 20 Republicans and vote with him. There is no way they’re gonna do this and have it end up as an acquittal. That defeats the whole purpose if it ever gets that far.

This is why I opined yesterday with the wise wisdom I possess that what this actually is is the 2020 campaign issue and they simply want there to be articles of impeachment, maybe an official vote, Trump to be impeached, and they want that to be the news, just that he has been impeached. Because they think most people will think that means he’s guilty. Because there’s no way they’re gonna let this play out to an acquittal, and McConnell has warned them that that’s what’s gonna happen if this ends up in the Senate.

Now, there’s contradictions to this theory. And one of them we mentioned today. And we’ve had Eleanor Holmes Norton and a couple of others make the point — one of them me — that they want to hurry this along. They want to get this done. They want to get two articles of impeachment. They want ’em written, they want ’em voted on by the House, and then they can take their time preparing the case for the House managers to ultimately march over to the Senate and make the trial.

But they want to get this done soon because they fear what Barr may end up producing. They want to be able to say when Barr surfaces the results of his investigation, they want to say, they want their impeachment to have happened first so that they can say, “That’s just a cheap attempt at them trying to diminish our impeachment movement. There’s nothing to that.” I think that’s what they’re in a race against. And they’re in a race against public opinion.

I mentioned earlier, folks, that people are not talking about this. I mean, we are, but when this show’s over, your life is lived. I mean, you go out and you do other things. This is not occupying what we would call the minds of the body politic.

I’m gonna tell you what. I was around when Clinton was impeached, and it was different then and that’s all anybody was talking about because there hadn’t been one in anybody’s lifetime. And there was real criminal activity that had taken place there.

Clinton had suborned perjury and had committed perjury in a federal grand jury deposition. And everybody knew that he had had the affair with the intern because the blue dress and the stain had surfaced and the cigar. And so everybody knew. But even during that process, remember the frustration, Snerdley? Clinton’s approval numbers were in the sixties throughout the whole thing, and they climbed. But the point is, everybody was talking about it, unlike now. People just don’t have the emotional reservoir to keep it full for this length of time.

Grab sound bite number 10. Here’s John Kasich again trying to get the people CNN to listen to him. This is last night with Don Lemon, and the question is, “So former governor Kasich, you say we’re not hearing from Republicans that there should be an investigation of the call with the Ukrainian president. Should we be hearing that?”

KASICH: I spent the weekend talking to a lot of people. The reason why a lot of these congressmen and senators aren’t saying anything is ’cause they get heat from their constituents, but they don’t get heat from their constituents who are Republicans. I don’t find a lot of Republicans who are coming out and saying, “We used to (sic) have an investigation.” I hear… I hear this: “Uh, it’s a blip!”

LEMON: (grumbling)

KASICH: I hear, “Well, you know, all politicians do this stuff.” I told a guy the other day in church. I said, “Listen to me! When a president is asking a foreign leader to do something that digs up dirt on a political opponent, this is a serious matter.” You know what he says? “Oh, they all do it.”

RUSH: So Kasich can’t get anybody to listen to this. They can’t get anybody to take it seriously. First, Governor Kasich, you damn well know that that’s not what Trump was doing! You’re just repeating the garbage that the whistleblower and Schiff are lying about. No, this is not a fine point. There wasn’t anything! Read the transcript for the call. It is so obvious what Trump’s doing here. He’s asking for help in the Barr investigation into what happened to him in the Russia thing.

But even then, I don’t care. Kasich tells this guy what he thinks. (impression) “You know, the president asking a foreign leader to dig up dirt…” He did no such thing! He didn’t ask anybody to dig up dirt! That’s Adam Schiff’s lie and here’s Kasich repeating it — and even so, Kasich’s church buddy says, “I don’t care. They all do it. They all do it,” and there are a lot of people who think they all do it, by the way, too.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know John Kasich’s church buddy says, “They all do it.” Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson announced that he was checking around the Clinton Library and Massage Parlor. You know what he found? And it didn’t take much effort at all ’cause it wasn’t hidden. Tucker Carlson… He reported this. He found where Bill Clinton asked Tony Blair, the prime minister of the U.K., for a political favor to settle a dispute between British Airways and two different U.S. airlines that Clinton said would help the political situation in the U.S.

Gore was running against Bush at the time. So this would be 2000, Algore versus W, and Clinton called Tony Blair and said, “Hey, my buddy Gore needs some help here.” They all do it. For crying out loud, what do you think Obama was doing talking to the mullahs in Iran to arrange for them to update their nuclear network? Wouldn’t you love to have been on some of those phone calls? Wouldn’t you love if there’d been a whistleblower on half the phone calls Obama had been on? There’s only one secret that Washington can keep, and that’s the name of people leaking against Donald Trump.

Doesn’t it seem that way?

It sure does to me.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Will in Somerset, California. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hello from California. I just have a simple question, and that is, to me, Trump is the commander-in-chief. He’s head of the executive branch. He does the treaties. My question is, isn’t it his right to check into foreign things —

RUSH: Yes!

CALLER: — that may cause a problem?

RUSH: Yes! Again, there is a treaty. See, here’s a great example. I have mentioned this minimum 10 times. I’m not complaining. I don’t complain — and believe me, folks, I’ve got things to whine about. But I never do, ’cause I’m the last person you would ever have any sympathy for for whining. But I got plenty of stuff I could whine about. Anyway, this proves how you need to keep mentioning things. It’s a treaty that was signed between the United States and Ukraine in 1999. Clinton signed it. It is a mutual anti-corruption pact.

And it pledges that both countries will pursue corruption inside each country that may be perpetuated by agents of the other country. So damn right. You could say, Will, that what Trump was doing is actually following the letter of the law by demanding — asking — the president of Ukraine to help him root out corruption by government officials in Ukraine! You’re exactly right. So that’s the eleventh time I’ve mentioned that, maybe more, and it’ll be necessary to mention it a bunch of more times, I’ll bet.